Internet protocol (IP) telephones are becoming increasingly popular for consumers and businesses as the technology improves. IP telephones have several advantages over analog or other telephones, including low or no cost for placing telephone calls, bundled services with other Internet-based services, and a variety of functionality, such as company directory services.
IP telephones use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications technology to communicate telephone calls over the Internet rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). IP telephones are programmed to register with session border controllers (SBCs), which are network devices, when being powered up. IP telephones are initially set-up with an IP address of regional SBCs to which the IP telephones are to register to enable connection to the Internet for users to place telephone calls thereover. The IP addresses or network addresses of the SBCs are entered or hard-coded into the IP telephones by administrators or users prior to initially using the IP telephones so that the IP telephones, during power up, communicate with the appropriate SBC to register and, after registration, access the Internet.
As conventionally performed, the IP telephone is hard-coded with a primary network address or IP address of an SBC local to the IP telephone to ensure successful access to the communications network. In addition, secondary or backup network addresses of other SBCs 106 are hard-coded into the IP telephone. For example, a first or primary network address may be 71.5.7.121, which is a network address of an SBC. Secondary or backup network addresses may be 100.10.12.5 and 67.99.5.5, which are associated with other SBCs on the communications network, and are also hard-coded into the IP telephone. As described below, hard-coding the network addresses of the SBCs are problematic for a variety of reasons.
One problem with hard-coding the IP telephones occurs when the IP telephones are physically moved from one geographic location to another. For example, if an IP telephone is relocated from California to New York and the IP telephone was originally configured with a network address of an SBC located in California, when the IP telephone is relocated, the IP telephone will continue communicating via the SBC in California unless the network address is reset to a local SBC (e.g., one located in New York).
Another problem with hard-coding the SBC addresses in the IP telephone is that short distances from the IP telephone to the SBC over the Internet does not necessarily mean quality of service (QoS) is better. For example, certain regions of the country, such as the northeast, have a lot of “hops” between network points, which may increase delay in communication between the network points. Still yet, jitter may be higher between the IP telephone and an SBC that is closer to the IP telephone than another SBC that is farther away. In summary, an IP telephone that connects to a local SBC may not receive as good QoS than a QoS that would be received by connecting to another SBC that is farther in distance.